1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system remote configuration, and more particularly to a system and method for maintaining network connectivity during remote configuration of an information handling system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems are often operated in a remote deployment environment in which a management station monitors and controls the software and firmware configuration of multiple clients. In a typical remote deployment, the information handling system is physically connected to a network through a network communication component, such as a network interface card (NIC), and then provided with power. A Pre-boot Execution Environment (PXE) client associated with the NIC initiates a boot to a PXE server to download a small program to deploy an operating system with a configuration agent. The configuration agent obtains configuration information from the management system and applies the configuration information to the information handling system. Generally, one of the first tasks for the configuration agent is to configure the NIC with Internet Protocol (IP) address information so that the management station can uniquely identify a NIC in the information handling system with a static IP address. Use of a static versus dynamic address helps to ensure accurate monitoring and configuring of the information handling system by the management station.
One difficulty that sometimes arises with remote deployment of a configuration is that an incorrect configuration of a NIC leads to failure of network communication to the information handling system and an inability to complete the configuration. Failure of a NIC configuration occurs if an IP address is not assigned or if an incorrect IP address is assigned, a not uncommon problem since IP and Media Access Control (MAC) addresses are generally a long series of letters or numbers that are prone to entry errors. Another cause of failure of a NIC configuration occurs if the operating system re-orders NICs of an information handling system from the order provided by the configuration agent. There is no standard way to order multiple NICs in an information handling system. Different operating systems and utilities might list NICS in different order, which in some cases results in configuration assigned to NIC 0 being actually assigned to NIC 1. Whatever the cause, once an incorrect configuration is applied to the NIC interfaced with the network, communication by the static address supported by the NIC typically fails until a technician manually and locally configures the system to recover network communication.